1. Field
The present disclosure relates to searching and matching data, and more particularly, to searching and matching data to provide answers to business queries.
2. Description of Related Art
Previously, customers of a business data service frequently requested information about entities. Even though the requested information was resident in the internal data repositories of the business data service, a meaningful answer could not be provided to the requester. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the record resides in an internal repository, but is not readily available to customers because it lacks a business identifier or D-U-N-S Number®. Second, the record has a business identifier, but the “individual” data view and the historical data view are not in a match reference file of the business data service.
According to a recent survey, 62% of the respondents indicated that the ability to search for records on companies that have not yet qualified for an entity identifier would improve their experience. The ability to utilize all internal data to provide an insightful answer to customer inquiries without significantly changing customer behavior or processes, product delivery and system response time is needed.
There is a need for a system and method that provides a meaningful answer to an information query at a much higher rate than in the prior art.